


It's the transition that's difficult

by purple_cube



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_cube/pseuds/purple_cube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's difficult. - Isaac Asimov.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's the transition that's difficult

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the Season 2 finale. Written for the Being Human Ficathon at beinghuman_thon in 2010, for gothic_veils who requested Annie/Mitchell. "After Mitchell's 'drunken' revelation that he thinks about Annie things are a little weird, until she decides enough is enough and she confronts him about it."

 

Despite knowing the truth, Annie can't help but wonder if there's some higher being at work that orchestrates her return to the world – because, really, the timing is _impeccable_.  
  
“I can't believe that the three of you are sitting there watching _The Real Hustle_ without me!”  
  
Three heads jerk to their right to find her standing in the doorway with her arms firmly folded across her chest, and a disgruntled look on her face that isn't entirely feigned.  
  
“And also, which one of you left the front door unlocked? Don't you watch the news? I could be some axe-wielding murderer for all you know.”  
  
Her indignation is short-lived however, as her friends' delight and simultaneous shrieks of her name greet her. She laughs helplessly as they clamber off the sofa – and over each other – to reach her.  
  
Three sets of arms envelop her – and three voices vie for her attention.  
  
“Annie! What happened?”  
  
“You came back, Annie! God, we've missed you.”  
  
“Bloody hell, Annie, you scared me half to death!”  
  
Eventually, they give her enough room to breathe, so to speak. Her smile is wide as she takes in the sight of each of them, from George to Nina to Mitchell. She opens her mouth to speak several times as she tries desperately to find something appropriate to say.  
  
In the end, she settles for short and sweet. “Hi!”  
  
Three somewhat confused replies of the same word echo around her.  
  
George is the first to continue. “So, are you back?” he asks tentatively. “I mean, for good?”  
  
“I really bloody hope so,” comes the painfully honest answer. “I've missed you lot.”  
  
“We've really missed you too,” Nina responds with a warm smile. And predictably, she's the one who notices first, her eyes travelling from head to toe as if seeing Annie for the first time. “Have you had a makeover?”  
  
Before she can answer, George's eyes widen. _Ah_ , she thinks. _The patented George Hissy Fit. How I've missed you._  
  
“Well! It's nice to know that while we were here busting a gut trying to get you back, you had time to visit Gok Wan and -”  
  
“Wait, Gok Wan _died_?”  
  
“What?” George shakes his head at her in exasperation. “Well, no, but I couldn't think of any _dead_ famous...makeover-type people. And maybe you stopped at his place once you'd crossed over...” His voice trails away, clearly not knowing which direction to proceed in.  
  
“I saw Trinny and Susannah in town once,” Mitchell muses, almost to himself. “If I knew we were going to have this conversation, I could of, you know,” he catches Annie's eye with a demonstrative cock of the head, “and told them to keep an eye out for you on the other side.”  
  
She frowns at his suggestion, though any disturbance she feels is quickly masked by the sheer pleasure of being able to have these conversations again.  
  
“Bloody hell, I've missed you,” she blurts out. She reaches out to hug each of them all over again.  
  
“Anyway, I have _not_ had a makeover. I've just...changed my clothes,” she concludes with a shrug. Three pairs of eyes take in the scarlet red top and skinny indigo jeans tucked into ankle boots.  
  
“But...you couldn't do that...before, you...well, you know.”  
  
“Yes, I know, George.” Annie tempers her irritation, because really, she can't blame him for being confused. _She_ sure as hell is. “But when I got back, I was, well I was kind of naked.” She cringes at the memory.  
  
“Oh really?” Mitchell's smirk is checked by her frosty glare.  
  
“Yes, naked, Mitchell. It happens to the best of us at least once in our lives – or after-lives. Luckily it was the middle of the night and I managed to get to the Asda car park without anyone seeing me -”  
  
“Asda? You mean, the one in town, round the corner from Kemp's lab?”  
  
She nods. “That's where I came out, at exactly the same spot where I had been taken. It's just a derelict building now, of course, but still creepy as hell. I found an old jacket in one of the offices that I used until I found the recycling banks in the supermarket car park.”  
  
“You stole from a charity bank?” George's outrage amuses her, as does Nina and Mitchell's simultaneous and theatrical roll of the eyes..  
  
“I was _naked_ ,” she protests. “I call that 'needy' even if you don't. And I'm sure The Salvation Army won't mind. Besides,” she continues with a twirl, “Not bad for somebody's else's cast-offs, are they?”  
  
She brushes Mitchell's bare arm as she swivels, and he catches her by the wrist. “Hang on.”  
  
He carefully turns her to face him. Slowly, he reaches up, guiding strands of hair from her face before running his forefinger across her cheek, over her chin and then dropping down to her collarbone.  
  
Annie's acutely of George and Nina watching them, but she can't help the blush that unfurls across her cheeks at his touch. That is, until that finger leaves her skin, hovers for a moment, and then returns with a sharp prod at the tip of her breastbone.  
  
“Ow!”  
  
“I can feel your bones!” he huffs incredulously. “You're not... _squishy_ any more.”  
  
“I know, isn't it great?” she laughs. “Though it means I can't do the whole Star Trek beaming in and out of rooms now, and have to use doors like the rest of you plebs, but -”  
  
“What happened to you, Annie?” George interrupts with a serious expression.  
  
Her smile fades slowly. “Why don't we all sit down?”  
  
~  
  
One round of tea and the final ten minutes of _The Real Hustle_ pass before she starts to tell them her story.  
  
“There's a darkness that surrounds everyone there, like they're stuck inside a bubble of light – and life. We were told to stay within the light, because no one would be able to help us if we fell into the darkness. Only, I realised that the newcomers were coming _from_ the dark -”  
  
“So you knew that the darkness was where the doors were,” Nina finishes with a small smile.  
  
Annie nods. “I snuck out of the room that I'd been herded in with the others and into a corridor. One corridor led to another, and then another – they just never seemed to end. And then finally I found a corridor that just seemed to stop at the end. I mean, there wasn't an end-wall or anything, it just carried on into the dark. So I went there and I waited, at the edge of the darkness.”  
  
She gets up to look out of the window onto the road. It's a quiet suburban area of Cardiff, not quite white-picket-fence territory, but certainly more upmarket than their old neighbourhood. It's the kind of place she would have wanted to them to move to, her and Owen and their new family. But now areas like these seem sterile to her, and soulless.  
  
It's probably the perfect place for them to disappear for a while.  
  
“How d'you get back, Annie?” George asks quietly.  
  
She turns away from the window and faces them. “I waited until I heard a voice, someone shouting. And there was somebody else there, crying quietly. I ran towards the sounds. It was dark, and I don't know for sure, but I thought I felt them being dragged past me. So I ran faster, before they had a chance to drag me back too.”  
  
“I couldn't see at all in the dark, there wasn't any light from the open door or anything. It was all darkness. So I didn't know I had actually gone through until I fell and hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, I was back at the lab...and naked.”  
  
“So it's not like last time, when you came to get Kemp?” Mitchell asks, speaking for the first time since she began her tale.  
  
Annie shakes her head. “That was different. The door was right there, in one of the rooms where we were waiting, with a massive No Entry sign on it. The door I went through to get here, well, I don't think it's the kind of door you're meant to go through from the other way.”  
  
“Do you feel...different? You're certainly less ghost-like than before,” Nina muses.  
  
Annie shrugs helplessly. “I'm not alive, I know, but I'm not...well, I'm not _as dead_ as I was. People can see me – I even had to pay a bus fare to get here, which was an extortionate amount by the way – and I don't have to wear those clothes any more. But,” and it still disappoints her to say this, “I'm not alive.”  
  
Nina gets up from her seat on the sofa and makes her way to her, sliding her arms across Annie's shoulders. “Well, I for one am glad that you're back.”  
  
Annie shares a watery smile with Mitchell and George over Nina's shoulder as she returns the hug.  
  
“Me too.”  
  
~  
  
 _At least the kitchen is bigger than in the old house_. Annie sips from her mug of tea; the taste is a distant echo of what she experienced when she was alive, but it is certainly better than the nothingness that she endured following her death.  
  
“Anyway, I want to know more about these gut-busting things that you said you were doing to get me back.”  
  
The two men look at each other sheepishly.  
  
“Well,” George starts awkwardly, “Mitchell wanted to bring you back as a zombie -”  
  
“Eww!”  
  
Retaliation is swift. “George bought a Ouija board. He hides it at the back of his wardrobe.”  
  
“Oh, is that what's in the box?” Nina sniggers at the revelation. “I thought that was where you kept your porn magazines.”  
  
“Actually, those are in my room,” Mitchell whispers conspiratorially across the table.  
  
“So, that was the grand plan?” Annie doesn't bother hiding her disappointment. “Hold a séance, and failing that, get the spade out and head down to the cemetery? Charming.”  
  
George attempts to look optimistic. “Well it's better than Nina's suggestion that Mitchell try and recruit you, despite you being dead for over two years.”  
  
To her credit, Nina appears mortified at her partner's revelation. “Oh, come on, I figured I couldn't say anything worse than zombiefication!” She turns to face him, grabbing the collar of his shirt as she starts to make her way to the door. “And just for that, you can help me get the dried laundry in from the garden and fold all the bedsheets.”  
  
Annie smiles as she catches George's retreating words to Nina, proclaiming that he has never bought a pornographic magazine in his life, before turning back to the only other occupant in the room.  
  
Mitchell watches her quietly, forehead creasing slightly, before admitting what has been on his mind.  
  
“What if they come and get you?”  
  
The question takes her by surprise, even if she has thought it herself on more than one occasion.  
  
“I'll fight them,” she says, not so convincingly. Annie takes a deep breath, drawing out the exhale. “I'll find a way. I always do.” _Better_ , she thinks.  
  
He smiles then, tender and soft. “Yeah, we'll find a way.” His smile widens. “You look great, Annie. Happy. Bubbly, even.”  
  
“ _Bubbly_? Can't say anyone's ever called me that.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” he shrugs. “As bubbly as a ghost can be, anyway. I'm beginning to see the error of my ways and appreciate that yes, Trinny and Susannah – and Gok – do indeed have a valuable role to play in this world.”  
  
“Well, that might be going a bit too far.” Annie pauses and bites her lip, before deciding that it needs to be said. “I guess you won't be imagining me walking around the house...and what was it? Something along the lines of _wondering about my skin under those grey clothes_.”  
  
She has just enough time to see him cringe before he drops his forehead onto the surface of the table. “I'm so sorry, Annie,” comes the muffled apology.  
  
His response is a little too serious for her to continue her teasing. So instead she settles for serious too. “It doesn't matter now, not really. I just feel like, well, like there's an enormous pink elephant sat on the dining table by your side, munching on popcorn and just laughing at the two of us.”  
  
He doesn't answer, but she takes the fact that he raises his head from the table and places his chin on his hands as a positive outcome.  
  
“George said that you were drunk, but it was pretty obvious that it was more than that. Is that what you used to be like, when you were with the other vampires?”  
  
He nods, his expression full of regret. “It's like being out of your head on drugs. You see all these things that you're doing and hear the things you say – only, it's like it's somebody else saying and doing them. It doesn't feel like you at all. You just watch, helpless, as this person destroys everything you've worked so hard to build up.”  
  
She doesn't want to ask where he got his fix, who he had to kill to get it. And she knows he won't tell her either, not until he's ready to talk about it.  
  
“I have some...issues that I need to work through about what happened – what I did. But I need you to know that it won't happen again. Because, if I'd been, well, sober, then maybe I could have stopped Kemp from taking you. Maybe I could've stopped them from sending you to the other side.” He looks up at her then, and something in her own expression seems to appease him. “But yeah, I have issues.”  
  
“Oh, it's okay. I know all about vampire guilt – I've seen _Buffy_. And _Angel_. And it wasn't your fault,” she adds. “Or George's, or Nina's. So you don't need to add that to whatever else you're feeling guilty about,” she concludes with a dismissing wave of the hand.  
  
He looks like he's about to go on the defensive, but instead catches her eye – and laughs. Though whether it's at himself or at her, she's not entirely sure. “So, we're okay, you and me?”  
  
“We'll always be okay, you big lump. Come here,” she beckons.  
  
He gets up slowly and makes his way to her. The embrace is clumsy at first, hands and arms clashing as they struggle to find a way to fit together.  
  
“It's been too long,” he comments with an awkward laugh.  
  
“Let's never leave it so long again, then.” _Way to crank up the cheese factor, Annie_.  
  
“Aw, I've missed your corniness.” This time the laughter is easy, and genuine.  
  
He feels warmer than he used to, which surprises her. _Must be me_ , she thinks.  
  
Mitchell tightens his hold, and she can't help but sigh. He's warm and strong and real. He's _safe_.  
  
She has no idea how long they stay like that. Mitchell moves first, shifting his weight slightly so that he can turn to see her. Annie moves instinctively, raising her chin from his chest – and somewhere between their individual actions they come together, his lips brushing the corner of her mouth.  
  
She doesn't respond, but neither does she turn away. His touch, his embrace, his _kiss_ \- if she can call it that – certainly isn't unwelcome. But after everything she's been through, and everything he's been through, Annie thinks that this is enough for now.  
  
So she stays exactly where she is, with the sides of their mouths just resting each other. After a while her own lips twitch into a smile, and his muscles beneath her fingertips seem to relax at that.  
  
The faint tinker of voices pulls her back to the world and to her surroundings. Mitchell's already started to pull away from her but he's clearly not fast enough, judging by George's amused glance as he steps into the kitchen.  
  
“Oh, for God's sake, is he kissing you again?”  
  
Mitchell raises his hands helplessly and huffs in mock outrage. Annie laughs at Nina's scandalous expression as she trails in behind George.  
  
“Honestly, she's been back five minutes and she's already getting some hot undead action.”  
  
George delivers a quizzical look over his shoulder at her. “Now there are two words that should never be put together.”  
  
Mitchell squeezes Annie's fingers lightly as he leaves her and joins the others to peer into the fridge and contemplate tonight's meal, all the while protesting his innocence.  
  
“Christ, I've missed you guys.”  
  
Three bored voices respond without bothering to turn to her – though each is most certainly laced with affection and humour.  
  
“We _know_ , Annie."

 


End file.
